Every time I head down here, I feel like I should be packing for an expedition.
You know, water bottles, snacks, fully charged phone, maybe a backup plan or two.
Because if history has taught us anything, it's that heading off into the unknown without proper preparation doesn't usually end well.
Which brings us to today's From the Vault episode.
It's the story of Burke and Wills, Australia's most famous, most expensive and most mistake-ridden expedition.
They set out with marching bands wagons camels, even a dinner gong and an optimism that wildly outweighed their experience.
Let's just say I'm hoping my own journeys go a little better than theirs.
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It was the most expensive, tragic, mistake-riddled expedition in Australian history.
And for some reason, it's better known than any other.
This is your Squiz Kids shortcut to Burke and Wills, the podcast where we dive into the who what when where, why and how of the big news stories.
I'm Amanda Bower.
And I'm Bryce Corbett.
161 years ago this month, two of Australia's most famous explorers died of malnutrition, exhaustion and possibly poisoning.
Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills, whom we remember, just as Burke and Wills were the first white people to travel from the south to the north of Australia.
But they never made it back again.
Today we'll take you through who Burke and Wills were, what went wrong on their expedition and why they are so famous.
Listen carefully, there's a squiz at the end.
Hoo!
OK, Bryce, we're definitely going to need the Squiz Kids time machine for this.
We're going back, way back, to Melbourne in 1860.
It's Gold Rush time.
And Melbourne has become the richest city in Australia, thanks to the gold.
It's grown quickly and has a population of around 140,000.
But there are still no cars, no planes, certainly no GPS, and none of the white settlers actually know what's in the middle of Australia.
There's a theory that there could be an inland lake, and there's a race on to be the first to find out.
The South Australian government has offered a massive reward to anyone who travels through the middle of the continent.
And the Victorian Exploration Committee wants to beat them.
They raise a huge amount of money to send Australia's most expensive expedition north from Melbourne, heading to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
I'll put a link in your episode notes to show the route.
Now, once they had the money, they needed a crew.
And they chose Robert O'Hara Burke, a policeman from Ireland, to lead the expedition.
Now, this policeman had no experience in exploration and no bushcraft skills.
So, Bryce, imagine organising a sailing trip and appointing a captain who doesn't know how to sail.
Crazy.
Burke had a big personality and he was decisive, but as we'll learn, he made some deadly decisions.
William John Wills was an English surveyor and surgeon and he did have bush and exploration experience, but he was a man who followed orders, even if he disagreed with them.
Wills was chosen to be Burke's third in command.
And let me just take a moment here to say, William Wills?
What were his parents thinking?
Anyway, on August 20 1860, to the sound of a marching band, Burke and Will's enormous expedition got underway.
There were 28 horses, 27 camels brought in especially from India the first time they'd been used in Australian exploration 19 men, 6 wagons, 21 tonnes of supplies and 4800 kilometres to go.
Burke and Wills are on their way.
But Amanda, you said Wills was third in command?
Who was second?
And why don't we ever hear about him instead of Wills?
Because that guy got so furious with Burke's leadership, he quit.
Let's learn what else went wrong on this deadly expedition.
What?
The first problem was that the expedition took way too much stuff.
Australian explorers with experience knew that the best approach was to travel light so that you could go quickly and spend as little time as possible in the harsh interior.
Burke took along an oak table with two chairs, dandruff brushes, even a gong to ring at mealtimes.
That's crazy.
With 21 tonnes of supplies loaded up, that's 21000 kilograms.
The wagons broke down on the very first day.
It took the expedition two whole months to travel just 750 kilometres to Menindee, the last settled area in Victoria at the time.
The regular male coach did that same route in a week.
So Burke made the decision to dump some of the supplies, including the lime juice.
Oh, no, not the lime juice.
As everyone knew back then, lime juice prevented scurvy, a disease you get when you don't eat enough fruits and vegetables.
Right.
Two of the expedition's five officers quit after Burke made the decision to dump a lot of provisions, which is a fancy word for supplies, and then Wills was promoted to second in command.
And it was at Menindee that Burke decided to split up his party.
That's right.
He'd gotten word from Melbourne that he needed to hurry up.
Remember, South Australia was nipping at their heels.
So he took the fastest horses, the seven fittest men and some camels and set out for a place called Cooper Creek.
He left most of their supplies and their Aboriginal guide behind.
Oh dear.
Burke had little respect for Aboriginal people and their knowledge so, unlike other explorers, he chose not to travel with them and make use of their knowledge and help.
Which really isn't very smart when you have literally no experience in the country you're heading towards, and Aboriginal people have survived there for tens of thousands of years.
Now Bryce, this podcast would go on for hours if we dissected everything that went wrong on this trip.
So let's summarise.
Yeah, good idea.
When they got to Cooper Creek Burke split up the group again but gave vague instructions to those left behind on what they should do.
Four men, including Burke and Wills, raced to make it to the north coast.
Wills thought it would take four months to get to the coast and then back to Cooper Creek, but Burke thought it would be less and he took just three months of supplies.
One of the four men, Charles Gray, died of starvation, exhaustion and, you've got it, scurvy.
The remaining three had to resort to eating their animals.
Ew.
They did make it to the north coast, kind of.
The mangrove swamps were so thick they couldn't actually see the sea, but the water was salty, so they called it a win.
And then they headed back to Cooper Creek.
But Wills had been right.
It took longer than three months.
And after four months, the Cooper Creek group had decided that they had to leave.
So they buried supplies under a tree and scratched dig into the tree so that if Burke's group was still alive they would hopefully find them.
Tragically, Burke, Wills and John King arrived just seven hours after those men had left.
No way!
They dug up the supplies and then, for some reason, Burke decided that instead of heading back on the track to Menindee, where rescuers would have found them, they'd go a different way that he thought was faster.
Crazy man wills disagreed, but you know he always followed orders.
So when the rescuers came looking burke, wills and king were only about 40 k's away, but not on any track that the rescuers thought they would have gone on.
And that shortcut burke had taken them on was no good surprise.
They were starving, they were exhausted and they had to turn back around again.
The indigenous Yandru Wanda people had been helping them find food and water, but Burke, in his wisdom, fired his guns over their heads and, not surprisingly, they stopped trying to help.
Oh dear.
The three men had seen the Yundrawanda eating a plant called Nardoo, so they did the same, but they didn't prepare it properly.
The Yundrawanda could have shown them if Burke hadn't fired his gun at them.
And so the Nardoo was actually poisoning them.
Sometime in late June 1861, Wills knew that he was going to die.
He insisted that Burke and King leave him and carry on.
But a few days later, Burke died too.
The Yandrawanda then took pity on King and they sheltered him for 77 days until rescuers came.
When Burke's and Will's bodies were recovered and brought back to Melbourne, they were given a hero's funeral and 40000 people came.
Wow, Amanda, that is something I find surprising.
I mean, Burke made so many mistakes and in total seven men died on this dreadful expedition.
Why were they thought of as heroes and why are they still so famous today?
Well, Burke and Wills did win that race to cross Australia from south to north.
Although, honestly, I find it completely unfair that we say Burke and Wills.
I mean, John King was there through all of it too, and he actually survived.
Right.
Wow.
Nuts.
Reason that Burke and Wills are so famous is that they created valuable maps and observed and recorded new species on the expedition.
Now, the only reason we have that information is that, before he died, Wills buried all his journals at what is still known as the Dig Tree, that one at Cooper Creek.
And I guess their story is appealing because it's a bit like a movie.
You have a dangerous challenge flawed characters, a punishing landscape and lots of conflict and drama.
Absolutely.
And lots of lessons learned about what not to do on an expedition.
And you know, sometimes you remember the tragic stories, the failures, better than the happy successes.
I mean, just look at Anzac Day or, you know, Romeo and Juliet.
There have been movies made about Burke and Wills, books, poems and songs written.
I'll put some links in your episode notes.
And whatever happened to those South Australian explorers?
Well, they weren't the first to reach the north, but John McDool Stewart's expedition was the first to go from south to north and make it back again, and with absolutely no loss of life, thanks to McDool Stewart's experience.
Right.
It does seem crazy that Burke and Wills are a household name, but that McDool Stewart far lesser.
Yeah.
Even though he is known as Australia's greatest inland explorer.
Wow.
Let's write that wrong, Bryce.
I've put a link in your episode notes to more information about him.
I can feel another shortcut about him coming along.
I think you might be right.
Time for the quiz.
This is the part of the podcast where you get to test how well you've been listening.
Question number one.
What job did Robert O'Hara Burke have before he was picked to lead the ill-fated expedition?
Yeah, that's right.
He was a policeman.
Question number two.
What crucial supply did Burke dump, causing disease later?
The lime juice.
Don't dump the lime juice.
Question number three.
What is the name of the South Australian explorer who successfully made it from south to north and back again?
Yep, his name was John McDool Stewart.
That's all we have time for today.
Thanks for joining us as we explored the who, what, how, where, why and when of Burke and Wills.
Now get out there and have a most excellent day.
Over and out.
